He had expected her to call yesterday, to congratulate him on the great piece in the Globe. The headline made the cover of the Sunday Metro section: “State Senator–Elect Rory McClain Vows to Fight Opiate Abuse, Recalls Childhood Friend’s Long Battle.”
It had taken weeks of finagling on John’s end. He thought it was a brilliant way of silencing all the naysayers from the old neighborhood, who claimed Rory was out of touch with his roots. Try saying that once you knew that one of his best buddies from high school, blinded as a teenager, had ended up a dropout, living among the junkies on the streets of Portland, Maine, for years and years. Until Rory got involved and brought him home to Dorchester, set him up with an apartment and a job washing dishes in his cousin’s coffee shop in Adams Village.
The paper had put a photo of Rory and his family on the front page of the section. Inside, on page eight, was a small black-and-white picture of the two friends, Rory and Peter O’Shea, as children. The pair of them in their swimming trunks at Carson Beach, arms around each other’s shoulders.
John was quoted in the third paragraph. All day yesterday, people had called him to mention it. But Nora stayed silent.
She had something out for Rory, for no reason John could comprehend. Maybe, like a lot of people, she didn’t trust an Irish Republican. Or maybe she thought Rory was full of himself. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. He hadn’t even wanted the article. John had heard him tell the Pete O’Shea story at a small fund-raiser. When he suggested they run with it in the press, Rory said he wouldn’t feel right about it—that he hadn’t done anything to help the guy that anybody else wouldn’t have done. That was Rory McClain. Humble to a fault.
Rory was a few years older than John, his brother Patrick’s age. Patrick couldn’t stand the guy either. He was a bad seed in high school, Pat said when John first asked if they knew each other. John thought it was more about him stepping into Patrick’s territory, or some macho nonsense like that, than it was about Rory himself. It all came to a head on the day of Maeve’s confirmation eight months ago, Patrick making a drunken scene. They hadn’t spoken since.
At the confirmation, Pat got all bent out of shape when he saw Rory and his wife at the church.
“What’s that shithead doing here?” he said.
“Shut up,” John whispered. “You know I’m working with him now. Whatever it is, Patrick, keep it to yourself.”
During the lunch at John’s country club after, Pat got wasted. An old client of John’s somehow mistook him for a coworker of Julia’s.
“So you’re a lawyer too?” the guy said.
Patrick laughed, an obnoxious drunken snort.
“He runs a bar,” John said, and if there was a hint of condescension to his tone, then good. Pat deserved it.
His brother looked him in the eye. “We can’t all be professional sellouts.”
John’s client smiled awkwardly and got up to refresh his drink.
“Fuck you,” John said under his breath.
Lunch passed in normal order. Soup then salad, then salmon or chicken, whatever a person chose. The waitresses were just pouring the coffee when there was a commotion in the lobby. John made a gesture that everyone should sit tight, and then he left and found Patrick and Rory stumbling out of the men’s room.
Chip, the manager of the club, got between them.
“He actually tried to hit him,” an old man in a sweater vest said, astonished. He was pointing at Patrick.
Chip set his eyes on Pat. “Sir, that’s not the sort of behavior we allow here,” he said in a stern voice. “I know you’re a guest of Mr. Rafferty, but—”
John saw the red and blue lights flashing through the front windows. Someone had called the police. His cousin Conor was behind him a minute later, walking across the lobby, pushing through the front door. John knew Conor would meet the officers out front, explain that he was a Boston cop himself, that it was just a family thing.
“There’s really no need for this,” Rory said to Chip. “It was a misunderstanding.”
Nora came from the dining room then, with such a crumpled look on her face.
Pat walked out, with Nora on his heels.
“I am so sorry,” John said to Rory. “Are you okay? I don’t know what to say. I’m mortified.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Rory said, clapping him on the back. “I’ve got drinkers in my family too. He was just having a bad day. Come on, let’s go have some cake.”
He never mentioned it to John again, even as the memory made John burn with shame. He had known for a long time that Patrick couldn’t stand him. But who did a thing like that? What had he ever done to Patrick to make him want to humiliate his own brother?
Patrick sent Julia roses from Stapleton Floral the next day, and Maeve a crisp hundred-dollar bill tucked into a greeting card. But that had been it for John.
Nora refused to take sides, which John saw as her taking Patrick’s side, since he was clearly in the wrong. She said it was unthinkable for brothers to go on this way over something so small. She told John that the McClains were bad people. That he shouldn’t have gotten involved with anyone from that family. But Nora had nothing to back it up, just a gut feeling. She had moved away thirty years ago—any petty grudge she held would be ancient history.
Maybe, like Patrick, Rory was a little wild in his day. But like John, he had made something of himself. They had a lot in common. Rory’s dad had been a bigwig at the Edison. He died the same year Charlie did. Rory wasn’t John’s biggest client by a long shot, but his win in November had been an important one, unlikely as it was. Even then, Nora didn’t offer congratulations. John thought Patrick might finally apologize: to him, to Rory. But Patrick didn’t say a word.
There were plenty of times over the years when the two of them stopped speaking for weeks or months at a stretch. John had once taken the girls to Castle Island for lunch during one of these periods. They parked their car in the lot outside Sullivan’s and looked out over Pleasure Bay. Patrick happened to pull in right beside them, a cheap-looking blonde in the passenger seat. Julia didn’t even notice him there. John and Patrick sat, eating their hot dogs side by side, never once acknowledging each other’s presence.
—
After Julia left to take Maeve to school, Nora called again.
John stood in the driveway in his suit and overcoat, his briefcase on the ground behind him, waiting for the car to arrive. The air was so cold that it almost hurt to breathe. He threw some salt down, careful to avoid his good shoes. He didn’t stop to answer the phone. It would be more efficient to call his mother back from the airport, when there was time to kill. While he had these few moments alone, he needed to think about strategy for this afternoon. He wanted to impress upon the client that, while he might be the most expensive option, you got what you paid for. Would they go for that?
He looked down the block, at all the other houses just like his. The first few months they lived here, he had pulled up in front of the wrong one at least once a week.
The development was eight years old. New houses made to look old on streets that hadn’t been there a decade ago, with names like Oaken Bucket Road and White Dove Lane. Theirs was called Hidden Valley Drive.
Your street is named after a salad dressing, his sister, Bridget, had said. You need to own that.
She was obsessed with the size of the house. Whatsa matter, John Boy? You couldn’t find a bigger one?
What could he say? Somewhere along the line, a six-bedroom brick colonial had come to seem normal. One time in ten, he might arrive home from work and marvel like a kid. A mansion, he would have called it when he was young. His mother still called it that. Two times in ten, the house came into view and his chest clenched, thinking of what would happen if things took one bad turn and he lost it all. His family thought he was rich now, but he and Julia had nothing compared to most of the people in their circle.
Part of him still felt as if he had tricked Julia into th
inking he was one thing when in fact he was another. You could make yourself look like anything at college, away from your family. He and Julia were so young then. She was the most incredible woman he’d ever met. He was willing to say anything to have her. Now the fear that spiraled through his head late at night was that one day she would look over and realize he was an imposter.
The fear kept him going. That, and the thought of his parents, who had done so much to give their kids a better life. None of them had done anything to equal the sacrifices Nora and Charlie had made. His mother didn’t even have a high school education. His father, just that. Yet somehow they had supported a family of six in a country that wasn’t their own. Through means no one had ever understood, they had left Dorchester and moved their children into the biggest, nicest house in Hull when John was eleven years old. Hull wasn’t an expensive town, like the one he lived in now. But even so.
For forty years, Charlie held court at Doyle’s Hardware Store in Quincy Center. He worked his ass off, painting houses inside and out. In the winter months he hung wallpaper and did odd jobs. But when he wasn’t working, he was at Doyle’s. People came to ask him which colors they should go with, how to fix a leaky kitchen faucet. Charlie loved being the expert. The guys at Doyle’s sent him all their customers. If you bought a can of paint from Mike Doyle, Charlie Rafferty would be the one to put it on your walls, guaranteed. When a Home Depot opened in Quincy, Doyle’s was forced to close. Charlie kept working, but without his spot at the shop, he was diminished. He went to Home Depot on a Saturday morning and eavesdropped on the salesmen, then gave the customers his own unsolicited opinion.
For a time, he had wanted John to come into the business with him. Charlie seemed almost disappointed when John got into Georgetown on a scholarship, even as he bragged about it to everyone he met.
John had wanted to work in politics since he was five years old. After he graduated, he got low-level campaign jobs—working for a guy running for Cambridge city councilor, and then the first female treasurer of Rhode Island. He got a rush from helping them win. The late nights, all hands on deck. He believed in the things they said. It meant something, just to be near a person like that, to fetch him a glass of water or call her a car. His father was so damn proud. He’d show up at a speech in a high school gym, fifty miles from home, just to see John in action.
At twenty-eight, he went to work for a Democratic consultant, a guy known for running all of Boston’s big races. His boss never let him do much more than go to campaign events out in the boonies. So many events, he barely ever saw his wife.
John wanted so badly to stand out. He worked like a dog. He applied for better jobs. But guys like him were a dime a dozen. It was impossible to compete. He tried to play up the Irish thing, but even a story of two parents off the boat wasn’t worth much. The kid in the office next to his at the State House had a mother from Donegal who had lived in Hyde Park for forty years and still spoke only Irish.
When John asked his boss and other older guys in the party why he wasn’t rising as fast as he thought he ought to, they clapped him on the back and told him to be patient. You’re one of the most talented young operatives we’ve got, they’d say, before passing him over for yet another promotion.
After she finished law school at BU, Julia suggested they start fresh somewhere else. The thought terrified him. In Boston, John ran into someone he knew everywhere he went. He liked that. He knew every shortcut in the city, every detour. He knew the best bars and restaurants, half the cops, and all the politicians. He was stuck here, and he loved it here. He wouldn’t know where to begin in some other place.
Julia got hired on at a good firm. She outearned him year after year. She said that was a ridiculous thing for him to be bothered by, but John sensed that she was getting impatient. He wasn’t living up to the promise she’d seen in him once. So he started his own shop, a one-man operation with exactly one client—the underdog in a city council race. It was a risk he regretted immediately. But six months after he opened his doors, the day before his thirty-eighth birthday, John was approached by a Republican, a wealthy Mormon businessman, who wanted to be governor of Massachusetts. He said he needed an insider heading up his campaign, someone the establishment would recognize as one of their own so that his differences wouldn’t scare them as much.
John asked for two days to think it over. He felt sick about it. A Republican. A Mormon. He didn’t believe in half the guy’s positions. And what if his big break—the right one—was just around the corner? When he asked his parents what they thought, Charlie was horrified. Nora, when pressed, said, “What does it matter? They’re all crooked anyhow.”
But the money could not be beat. And life was disappointing sometimes. You moved on, you took a different course. Or else you could end up like his brothers, rehashing the same old stories, wasting your life on what-ifs. John said yes. He tried not to think about how many other guys had turned down the offer first.
His risk paid off. His man won, against the odds. Soon enough, he was working for a governor. The organization had strong business ties, tons of money, deep loyalty. Based on one glowing magazine profile, written by a friend of a friend of Julia’s and denounced by half his peers, John got a reputation for making GOP miracles happen in blue states. He was approached by Republicans from around the country who wanted help with House and Senate runs. By thirty-nine, he was one of the highest-paid consultants in the business. It wasn’t Wall Street money, but it was more than he had ever made before.
It only got better when the governor decided to run for president, putting them both on a national stage. Once, John had had to sell the guy to Massachusetts as a Republican who leaned left on social issues. Now, he was the Irish Catholic who traveled the country putting religious right-wingers at ease, about the Mormonism, the liberal positions on gay marriage and abortion. John’s presence, his very name, seemed to say that he wouldn’t stand behind someone who wasn’t just as conservative as they were.
John changed their minds. He got five former ambassadors to the Vatican to back his guy publicly over two Catholic rivals ahead of the New Hampshire primary. It felt good to be useful. In the end, the governor was the party’s runner-up for the highest office in the nation. They were already laying the groundwork for a 2012 run.
John had a staff of fifteen people. Gorgeous, massive offices in Government Center. Most of his revenue came from lobbying now, and a growing list of corporate clients. He knew there were those who said it was all one big conflict of interest, but he didn’t let it bother him. His only regret was that his father hadn’t lived long enough to see him reach the top.
If he ever felt a twinge of doubt, he’d write a big check to Bridget’s dog shelter, or to the Home for Little Wanderers. John couldn’t stop now, even if he wanted to. Julia had grown up with money. When they were young and had none, she swore it didn’t matter. But the better they both did, the more extravagant her tastes became. Her handbag from some no-name boutique was no longer good enough. She needed Chanel. They got upgraded to first class on one flight, and afterward coach seemed like an unfathomable nightmare.
They sent Maeve to private school and horseback riding lessons. She’d been getting hundred-dollar haircuts on Newbury Street since she was nine. They had a beach house now. Both houses had to be decorated with antiques, where once mass-produced Crate and Barrel stuff had sufficed. Meanwhile, his mother thought even Crate and Barrel was a hideous rip-off. “I have lots of nice pieces in the cellar, you should take a look,” she said to Julia whenever Julia told her they had gotten something new. Which was often. She had a habit of changing her mind about furniture, casting off perfectly good things to his sister or a neighbor down the block.
To Julia’s credit, she had come to understand that his mother didn’t appreciate aesthetics, only a bargain. When Nora asked where they’d gotten a ten-thousand-dollar Georgian campaign desk, Julia said without blinking that she’d bought it at Pottery Barn.
He sometimes thought that if his mother saw his credit card bills, his mortgage, she might lose the power of speech. John was spending every penny he earned, saving next to nothing. It was the opposite of what he’d been raised to do.
He named his company Miltown Strategies after his parents’ hometown, an homage to the American immigrant story. His mother was not impressed. People won’t know how to spell it, John. Nobody’s ever heard of that place. You should call it something catchier.
Nothing he could do was ever good enough for Nora. Sometimes it seemed like she had barely registered John’s existence, even if—as his wife liked to remind him—his entire life had been shaped by the quest for her approval. His stock had only gone up when he gave her a grandchild.
She was far more proud of Patrick’s bar than of anything John had done.
It had always been Pat’s big dream to open a place of his own on Dorchester Avenue. Because one more dive bar was just what Dorchester needed. He talked about it all the time back when he was working on the loading dock at the Conley Terminal in Southie, loading and unloading shipping containers—they were filled with seafood one day, beer the next, scrap metal after that. It seemed like the bar idea would never go any further than fantasy until Patrick caught what he referred to as his big break.
While he was working, a line snapped. A crate fell to the ground, severing two of his toes. Had Patrick been a couple of inches farther to the left, it might have taken off his whole foot. A few inches farther than that and he would have been a dead man. But, painful though it was, he could live without a couple of toes, especially when he was awarded two hundred grand for his troubles. Pat used the money to open the bar.
Nora acted like it was some great accomplishment, when Pat had only gotten his wish because of a stupid lawsuit. He wasn’t paying attention. He was probably drunk on the job. Now he had his best friend and his little brother running the bar. Fergie and Brian. The Dream Team.
—
The black town car pulled up right on time.
Saints for All Occasions Page 10
